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Apparently this news came out in May 2023. I also was bamboozled into thinking that sophisticated computer vision algos -- that worked -- were doing this. I'm
by xp84 3y ago
Apparently this news came out in May 2023. I also was bamboozled into thinking that sophisticated computer vision algos -- that worked -- were doing this.
I'm now picturing the remote workers constantly switching between cameras, studying: Did he put down the can of kidney beans or the can of corn there? Wait, the man picked up the bananas, but then he handed them to the woman in the white shirt. Let's charge them to her account. Wait, she handed them back at 14:42 in aisle 16. Going to switch them back to the man.
All day long, day in day out, for years. I am the last to criticize 'low wage jobs' paternalistically, because I know they may be much better than what the workers might otherwise be doing: perhaps just toiling in the fields for 16 hours a day (or worse: something like 'melting down discarded PCBs to recover trace metals'). But still, I do not think I would want to do this job nor that it was worth it. I get that they were supposedly trying to train an algorithm to do it. I'm glad that they aren't keeping at it any longer though now that it's proven so unworkable.
- idontwantthis 3y agoIf you did some kind of shell game with 5 different people all passing around their items, then you don’t get charged correctly is it theft? Did anyone ever try that?
- baumy 3y agoI worked for Amazon in Seattle when Amazon Go first launched. As you'd expect, lots of SDE teams made games out of trying to fool the thing in various ways. A few attempts were successful early on (passing items back and forth, one person moving something to the wrong shelf and another person picking it up, people dressing in identical outfits, etc), but the success rate in fooling the system was very very low. No method of trying to trick it that I ever heard of worked consistently, and it definitely seemed to get harder to fool the longer the store was open. At the time I thought that whatever algos were being run on the camera feeds were getting better. Knowing that it was basically all manual, I'm not sure what the explanation is for the store seemingly getting harder to fool over time. Possibly just placebo, or people lost interest in trying so hard to fool it.
- burntalmonds 3y agoThomas Crown Affair at the grocery store.
- eyegor 3y agoProbably fewer patrons and similar number of employees in the sweatshops. More eyes per patron leads to fewer errors. Or maybe they trained the best grocery cv model around from having a big high quality dataset, and you were fighting it. But then I'd think the tech would've been passed to whole foods instead of packing up shop, so final guess is sweatshop singularity theory.
- throwazr 3y agoYou underestimated the silicon valley engineers
- ilikecakeandpie 3y agoSeems a little cruel in retrospect considering it was humans watching you, but I suppose there wasn't an easy way to gain this information
- Terr_ 3y ago> If you did some kind of shell game with 5 different people all passing around their items, then you don’t get charged correctly is it theft? IANAL but I'm confident the legal answer is "yes", the same as if someone was using sleight-of-hand with objects at a cashier-and-conveyor-belt checkout station. Whether charges are brought and how easily the case can be proved is another matter, but the intent is what makes it a crime.
- pcchristie 3y agoI thought one of the marketing lines was that Amazon was so confident/comfortable in their implementation was that they assumed all liability for mistakes (though as I type this I realise they may have worded it to encapsulate only honest mistakes rather than people trying deliberately to break the system).
- lupire 3y agoBeing forgiven doesn't make it not a crime, or just reduces the chance of enforcement.
- Terr_ 3y ago> they assumed all liability for mistakes To get a little pedantic, assuming such a promise existed, it actually doesn't mean as much as most people think. A merchant saying "we won't sue you in civil court for the missing money" does not prevent the local government from criminally prosecuting that same person for theft. American TV dramas often show the police asking people "Do you want to press charges?", but the idea that the question matters is a myth, since victims of crime don't get to decide that. At best, it's a terribly misleading shortening of: "Just for my own private curiosity, do you plan to lobby or press upon your local government officials into pressing charges?"
- astura 3y ago>though as I type this I realise they may have worded it to encapsulate only honest mistakes rather than people trying deliberately to break the system Exactly. Retailers generally assume liability for honest mistakes made by their system/employees and sometimes even their customers. However, when people knowingly exploit a loophole for financial gain it becomes fraud. Here's a real example - https://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/local/greensboro-woman-pleads-guilty-to-qvc-scam/83-402367135 https://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/local/greensboro-woma...
- RichardCA 3y ago> something like 'melting down discarded PCBs to recover trace metals' Better than shipbreaking. https://youtu.be/5jdEG_ACXLw https://youtu.be/5jdEG_ACXLw
- h0l0cube 3y agoThanks for that Edit: On thinking about this tangent, it seems that if global regulation is the only solution, it would make sense to enforce regulation from the ship building side (in western countries), rather than the wrecking side (in developing countries) which will only displace the bad practices to less scrupulous countries. A solution might be sizable amount of money that had to be paid to escrow that could not be released back to the owner until the ship has been disposed of in an environmentally sound manner, incentivizing and funding the proper scrapping of ships. Or perhaps a levy which funds safety practices and equipment for scrapping companies
- skhunted 3y agoGlobalization was largely a response to environmental movements in the U.S. We offshored our pollution generation.
- adolph 3y agoAlso industrial safety, worker hours, etc
- tbrownaw 3y agoYou don't always even need to move things out-of-county to do regulatory arbitrage. For example Uber and Airbnb.
- h0l0cube 3y agoUh, really? I was certain that the aftermath of WWII was responsible for establishing a form of global governance (by consensus) via the UN, and then there’s the benefits of free trade agreements that drove economic globalization.
- ametrau 3y ago> the workers might otherwise be doing: perhaps just toiling in the fields for 16 hours a day That is robber barron propaganda to make you believe their enslavement of people (by creating the right situation where the people have no choice) is actual good for them.
- gruez 3y agoWho are the "robber barrons" in this case, and how did they cause "the right situation where the people have no choice"?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- xp84 3y agoI originally wrote a long reply, but I'll just say that I don't buy your framing, and I don't think the people who depend on that foreign money flowing in to pay them for their work at the prevailing wage where they live agree with you either.
- freilanzer 3y agoThey are not slaves, they are free to quit and work somewhere else. Are they not?
- ametrau 3y agoRight... so the line goes. They're free to go to any neighbouring city that will do the same to them now that we've destroyed the village (by poaching young people in various ways. There are many ways to destroy a city if you are strategic and have financing.) In these countries the cities are created around the factories etc and planned as part of the development. You're not free once your subsistence relies on this corporation. It's slavery but because some tokens are being transferred (the food supply is probably also corp. owned--especially in the early stages of the development) it is possible to fool the naive / stupid into think this is not slavery.
- 3y ago
- dcow 3y agoThis factoid made its way through my social circles back in 2019. I'm a little surprised it wasn't more common knowledge.